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Video: Ambush Suspect Frein Restrained with Murdered Pennsylvania Trooper's Cuffs

Eric Frein -- accused of murdering a state trooper and wounding another last month -- evaded capture for nearly seven weeks. But Pennsylvania State Police say, in the end, the self-taught survivalist gave up without a fight.

October 31, 2014
Video: Ambush Suspect Frein Restrained with Murdered Pennsylvania Trooper's Cuffs

 

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Eric Frein -- accused of murdering a state trooper and wounding another last month -- evaded capture for nearly seven weeks. But Pennsylvania State Police say, in the end, the self-taught survivalist gave up without a fight, CBS News correspondent Vladimir Duthiers reports.

"They ordered him to surrender, to get down on his knees and raise his hands, which is what he did," State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan said at a press conference Thursday night. "Once they approached him, he admitted his identity, and he was taken into custody."

Frein's arrest included a special salute to the trooper killed in the Sept. 12 ambush: Authorities placed him in the handcuffs of slain Cpl. Bryon Dickson and put him in Dickson's squad car for the ride back, under heavy police escort, to the Blooming Grove barracks.

For 48 tense days, hundreds of law enforcement officials fanned out across the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania in a grueling manhunt for the 31-year-old survivalist armed with high-powered weaponry and explosives.

In the end, Frein surrendered meekly around 6 p.m. Thursday to a team of U.S. marshals who stumbled across him near an abandoned airplane hangar some 30 miles from the rural barracks where he allegedly opened fire Sept. 12, killing a trooper and seriously injuring another.

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Noonan said Frein was "definitely taken by surprise" when searchers found the suspect in Tannersville, Pennsylvania, a few miles from his parents' home. "He was away from the hangar and in an open field when we apprehended him," he said.

Frein's arrest included a special salute to the trooper killed in the Sept. 12 ambush: Authorities placed him in the handcuffs of slain Cpl. Bryon Dickson and put him in Dickson's squad car for the ride back, under heavy police escort, to the Blooming Grove barracks.


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